Birth control is not controversial! In fact, 99% of sexually active women use it at some point in their lives. Women use birth control for all sorts of reasons, including to avoid getting pregnant before they are ready. Making birth control accessible and affordable is the quickest way to reduce the number of unintended pregnancies.

At NARAL Pro-Choice Oregon, we’re fighting to make sure every woman has access to affordable birth control that is right for her—no matter where she lives, where she works or how much money she makes—so she can control her own future.

Insurance Coverage

Laws promoting insurance coverage of contraception are crucial to ensuring comprehensive reproductive-health care. The Affordable Care Act’s contraceptive-coverage policy ensured that the full range of birth control options would be covered with no copay. Although this policy is in danger at the federal level, we have passed laws ensuring this benefit for many Oregonians. Oregon has also passed a law requiring that insurers cover a year’s supply of contraception dispensed at once.

Pharmacy Access

A woman should be able to get her birth control prescription filled at any pharmacy.

Our nation’s laws have always protected freedom of religion—but not the right to impose one’s religious beliefs on others. Women should not have to fear being turned away, lectured or humiliated at the pharmacy counter when they go to pick up birth control. Pharmacies should fill all birth control prescriptions without delay or judgement.

Eight in 10 Americans say pharmacists who personally oppose birth control for religious reasons should not be able to refuse to sell oral contraceptives to women. Even 74 percent of abortion opponents disagree with giving pharmacists this refusal power.